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The greatest core workout you can get on the mountain

Kate Bongiovanni
3/01/2011 11:37 AM

Who’s not lusting for that hard-core six pack around your midsection? With bikini season looming closer, or upon us for those trading snow for surf this time of year, the last thing we want to do is bare all on the beach or in the hot tub with flab abs. But forget the endless crunches, full sit-ups, reverse sit-ups, stability ball crunches and more that you find yourself doing to prep. You can tame that tummy without needing to leave the mountain and skip a ski day. The trick? Moguls.

If there’s one thing the Talons Challenge taught me, it’s that mogul skiing is far from easy. I knew that before hitting bump run after bump run at Beaver Creek on Feb. 26, but it finally stuck with me when I hit lucky number—and final run—13.
Mogul skiing offers a quad-burning, core-channeling workout that comes naturally from skiing those bumps the way they were supposed to be skied. And I have Annie Black, a ski instructor at Keystone, to thank for that. She drilled into my head that mogul skiing is all about absorption and retraction.
Absorption and retraction. The words alone don’t completely illustrate the technique, but this video does. So does a cartoon Black shows all the Bettys who ski with her at Betty Fest, a short video with a stick-person skier pulling his legs up at the top of each bump then pushing away to full extension at the bottom. The stick-person skier’s torso and head never move, all the movement is in the legs.
As Black explains, it’s all about keeping your torso in the same plane while pulling your quads up and then pushing down. It’s no easy feat to master, especially if you shy away from the moguls like me, but your core will reap the benefits even when you’re just practicing. Absorbing and retracting feels a lot like doing crunches and hitting the hard-to-tone lower abdominal muscles.
If you’ve skied with Annie Black all day, whether at a Betty Fest or a lesson, she’ll drill it into your head, too. It might take a while for it to sink in, as it did for me, but it’s rewarding when your mind finally understands what it was being taught and can put it into action.
I certainly don’t look like Hannah Kearney or Jonny Moseley on the bumps, but at least I’m getting a similar workout. I could feel the burn, quads too, the next day. Perfect for this skier who’s supposed to be training for a marathon but is hitting the slopes instead.
--Kate Bongiovanni

 

Tags: fitness, Tips & Techniques, Skiing, Beaver Creek, Technology
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